Today in History

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 7 March
Ancient Rome: Junonalia, procession in honour of Juno (goddess and protector of women)

0322 - BCE - Death of Aristotle, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great

1274 - Death of Thomas Aquinas, Italian scholastic philosopher

1792 - Birth of Sir John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer

1849 - Birth of Bro. Luther Burbank, US horticulturist, freethinker and Freemason

1907 - Birth of Mircea Eliade, religious historian (Le Yoga)

1941 - British troops invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia)

1942 - Death of Lucy Parsons, US anarchist labor organizer

Alessandro Manzoni
Italian poet and novelist (The Betrothed)
(Born this day 1785)

When a friend, then, indulges in the joy of unburdening
a secret on to another friend's bosom, he makes the latter,
in his turn, feel the urge to taste the same joy himself

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 8 March
International Women’s Day

1841 - Birth of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., US Supreme Court Justice

1859 - Birth of Kenneth Grahame, Scottish author (The Wind in the Willows)

1887 - Death of Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and social reformer

1890 - Birth of Gene Fowler, American journalist, author and dramatist

1931 - Birth of John McPhee, American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (creative non-fiction)

1934 - Edwin Hubble photo shows as many galaxies as Milky Way has stars

1947 - Death of Carrie Chapman Catt, American suffragist

The Fox sisters: Kate, Leah and Margaret
(Margaret Fox, US spiritualist and self-confessed fraud, died this day 1893)

Margaret Fox's confession

My sister Katie was the first one to discover that by swishing her fingers she could produce a certain noise with the knuckles and joints, and that the same effect could be made with the toes. Finding we could make raps with our feet — first with one foot and then with both- we practiced until we could do this easily when the room was dark. No one suspected us of any trick because we were such young children ... all the neighbors thought there was something, and they wanted to find out what it was. They were convinced some one had been murdered in the house. They asked us about it, and we would rap one for the spirit answer 'yes', not three, as we did afterwards. We did not know anything about Spiritualism then. The murder, they concluded, must have been committed in the house. They went over the whole surrounding country, trying to get the names of people who had formerly lived in the house. They found finally a man by the name of Bell, and they said that this poor innocent man had committed a murder in the house, and that these noises came from the spirit of the murdered person. Poor Bell was shunned and looked upon by the whole community as a murderer. As far as spirits were concerned, neither my sister nor I thought about it...I have seen so much miserable deception that I am willing to assist in any way and to positively state that Spiritualism is a fraud of the worst description. I do so before my God, and my idea is to expose it ... I trust that this statement, coming solemnly from me, the first and most successful in this deception, will break the force of the rapid growth of Spiritualism and prove that it is all a fraud, a hypocrisy and a delusion."

New York World Newspaper, October 21, 1888

[Tamrin]

Friday, 9 March
Strinennia, Slavic holiday of Spring

1763 - Birth of William Cobbett, English politician, agriculturist and journalist

1822 - A US National Masonic Congress was held in the US Capitol Building, Washington D.C.

1892 - Birth of Vita Sackville-West, English novelist and poet (The Land)

1931 - Death of Ida B Wells-Barnett, African-American journalist and anti-lynching campaigner

1934 - Birth of Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut, first human in space

1951 - Birth of Michael Kinsley, US journalist, editor, founder of Slate magazine

1994 - Death Charles Bukowski, German-American novelist and poet

Honore Mirabeau (comte de Mirabeau)
French writer, orator and statesman
(Born this day 1749)

To administer is to govern: to govern is to reign.
That is the essence of the problem

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 10 March
Babylon: Feast Day of Ishtar
USA: Harriet Tubman Day

1748 - English slave-ship Captain John Newton, was converted to Christianity (Amazing Grace)

1772 - Birth of Friedrich von Schlegel, German romantic writer and critic (Lucinde)

1847 - Birth of Kate Sheppard, leader of New Zealand female suffrage movement

1913 - Death of Harriet Tubman, abolitionist, conductor on Underground RR

1920 - Initiation of Bro. Sir Robert Menzies, Australian PM, (Austral Temple Lodge, Vic.)

1940 - Birth of Wayne Dyer, American psychologist (Universe Within You)

1957 - Birth of Osama bin Laden, Saudi-born former head of al-Qaeda, mass murderer

Georg Friedrich Creuzer
German philological historian (Idea und Probe)
(Born this day 1771)

A myth does not describe what happened in some obscure period before
human reckoning, but what happens always and repeatedly, it does not explain
the causal origins of our world, but rehearses its permanent spiritual significance

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 11 March
Ancient Rome: Feast Day of Hecules
US: Johnny Appleseed Day (anniversary of John Chapman’s death in 1845)

1890 - Birth of Bro. Vannevar Bush, American electrical engineer (1st electronic analog computer)

1903 - Birth of Lawrence Welk, American entertainer

1916 - Birth of Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1931 - Birth of Rupert Murdoch, Australian-American publisher (New York Post), OGG, CEO (Fox)

1926 - Birth of Bro. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, civil rights leader

1952 - Birth of Douglas Adams, British author (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

1955 - Death of Bro. Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist (penicillin)

Geoffrey Blainey
Australian historian and author (The Tyranny of Distance)
(Born this day 1930)

To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history.
This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely
a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly every-
thing that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which
I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the
optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official
circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until
they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of
Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very
old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, some-
times not... The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing
of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratu-
latory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced

[Tamrin]

Monday, 12 March
Egypt: Martyrdom of Hypatia, last head of the School, Museum & Library of Alexandria (415 CE)

1672 - Baptism of Sir Richard Steele, Anglo-Irish writer (The Tatler and The Spectator)

1685 - Birth of George Berkeley, Anglo-Irish philosopher and bishop of Cloyne

1891 - Birth of Michael Polanyi, FRS, Hungarian-English chemist, economist and sociologist

1922 - Birth of Jack Kerouac, American beat novelist and poet

1923 - Birth of Bro. Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., US astronaut (made a mason at sight)

1925 - Birth of Harry Harrison (H.M. Dempsey), US science fiction author (Stainless Steel Rat)

1932 - Birth of Bro. Rev. Andrew Young, US civil rights activist, politician, ambassador to the UN

Juliette Gordon Low, American youth leader
(Founded US Girl Guides this day in 1912)

Right is right, even if no one else does it

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 13 March
Ancient Greece: Day of Diotima of Mantinaea, instructress of Socrates

1683 - Birth of Bro. John Theophilus Desaguliers, “the father of modern, speculative Freemasonry”

1733 - Birth of Joseph Priestley, English clergyman and scientist (discovered oxygen)

1878 - Bro. Sir Edmund Barton, Australia’s first PM was made a Mason in Australian Lodge of Harmony

1906 - Death of Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist

1934 - Birth of Barry Hughart, American fantasy author

1938 - Death of Clarence S Darrow, US attorney (Scopes Monkey Trial)

1977 - Death of Fannie Lou Hamer, American freedom fighter

Percival Lowell
US businessman, author, mathematician and astronomer
(Born this day 1855)

Imagination is as vital to any advance in science as
learning and precision are essential for starting points

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 14 March
Mathematicians: Pi Day (3.14 being an approximation of Pi, celebrated at 1:59... am)

1471 - Death in prison of Sir Thomas Malory, British author (Le Morte d'Arthur)

1879 - Birth of Albert Einstein, German physicist (E=mc²/Theory of Relativity, Nobel 1921)

1883 - Death of Karl Marx, German philosopher and author (Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto)

1900 - Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel's laws of genetics

1968 - UK performs atmospheric nuclear test at Maralinga, Australia

1989 - Death of Edward Abbey, American naturalist novelist (The Monkey Wrench Gang)

1991 - British Court of Appeal frees "Birmingham 6" (unjustly sentenced in 1975)

Eliphas Levi
French occult author and purported magician
(Made a Mason this day 1861, Lodge Rose du Parfait Silence,
Paris, GOdF: Dropped from the rolls 21 August the same year)

In his reception speech, Eliphas Levi, to the great astonishment of his auditors,
little inclined to paradoxes, made the following statement: "I come to bring you
your lost traditions, the exact knowledge of your signs and emblems, and in con-
sequence to show you the aim for the attainment of which your association has
been constituted." He then tried to demonstrate to his coreligionists that Masonic
Symbolism is borrowed from the Cabala. It was time wasted. No one believed him

M Caudet, the Venerable (Worshipful Master) of Lodge Rose du Parfait Silence, Paris, GOdF

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 15 March
Greece & Rome: Day of Magna Mater (Great Mother), Rea, Cybele, etc. (chariot drawn by lions)

0044 - BCE - Assassination of Julius Cæsar (Ides of March)

1666 - Birth of Georg Baehr, German master builder (Frauenkirche, Dresden)

1767 - Birth of MW Bro. Andrew Jackson, 7th US President (1829-37)

1858 - Birth of Liberty Hyde Bailey, US botanist (Plantbreeding)

1905 - Birth of Berthold Schenck von Stauffenberg, attempted to assassinate Hitler

1960 - Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve established (1st underwater park)

1971 - Chatrooms make their debut on the Internet

Alice Cunningham Fletcher
US ethnologist and author (Indian music)
(Born this day 1838)

The [Native American] woman owns her horses, dogs, and all the lodge equipments; children
own their own articles; and parents do not control the possessions of their children … A wife is
as independent as the most independent man in our midst. Combined with the fact that among
many tribes, female elders chose, advised, and could depose the male chief and signed treaties
with the U.S. government along with male leaders — and that women could divorce and con-
trolled their own fertility though a knowledge of herbs and timing — this caused indigenous
women to be seen as immoral and tribal systems to be ridiculed as “petticoat government”

[Tamrin]

Friday, 16 March
Ancient Rome: Liberalia (From Liber, Thracian god of wine, or Liber Pater, a name of Bacchus)

1244 - More than 200 Cathar defenders of Montségur were burned at the stake

1751 - Birth of James Madison, 4th President of the United States

1774 - Birth of Bro. Matthew Flinders, English cartographer (circumnavigated Australia)

1882 - Death of Charles R Darwin, English naturalist (Origin of Species)

1900 - Sir Arthur Evans finds Minoan city of Knossos, Crete

1906 - Birth of Henny Youngman, British-born American comedian and violinist

1946 - Birth of Judith Darlene Hampton (aka JZ Knight and Ramtha), American “channeler”

Aubrey Beardsley, English artist
(Died this day 1898)

No language is rude that can boast polite writers